Kevin Smith Interview

It’s hard to know how to talk about a film you’re directing but didn’t produce or write.

Kevin Smith : It’s strange. I was worried about how [to] go out and talk about it. No. 1, I didn’t write it; No. 2, it's light -- a popcorn movie. I love it; it’s fu-u-u-ny, but it’s light -- it’s the lightest movie I’ve made since Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. It’s not normally what I’m known for doing. Normally, when I do press, I have buckets to talk about regarding the actual film. But it seems like I have this much (squeezes fingers together) to say about the content of the movie and this much to say (spreads arms) about why I did it, and how I did it and will I do it again?

So why are you hiring yourself out as a director?

KS: I’ll tell you what happened. Zach and Miri Make a Porno comes out, [and] I had -- well, I wouldn’t call it a nervous breakdown, but I definitely would call it an emotional breakdown. That was the movie that was supposed to push us to the next level. Judd Apatow had rewritten the game. Judd Apatow had started making movies like my movies, but his movies were very successful, so he proved this genre could do more than $30 million in box office [sales], and here I was, the guy who quasi-created that genre, with this guy Seth Rogen, and I had an instant recipe for success. It winds up doing the exact same business all my movies do. I was so busted up by that because that was the one that’s gonna put us over. I wasn’t thinking $100 million, but I thought there was no reason we couldn’t do Forgetting Sarah Marshall business, but we didn’t. We wound up doing Kevin Smith business and I did realize it later on -- it wasn’t that bad. We wound up not even making the most money of any Kevin Smith movie; we did our standard $30 million.

You say that in a derogatory way. It's $30 million -- not big, but solid.

KS: I’ll tell you why. It all leads up to the important lesson in life which is numbers don’t matter. But at that point, the Friday number was $2.2 million and extrapolated over three days it was going to be a $6-$7 million opening weekend. That was less than Clerks II, and that movie didn’t have the guy from Knocked Up on the posters. That was weird too. I was sitting there going: “$2.2 million?” And I turned off right then and there. I swore off the internet, I came off the grid. I can’t go back on the internet. I’m going to get destroyed. Do you understand? All the people who can’t stand me already are going to dance on my f*ckin’ ashes, man. This is the ultimate failure. I take the golden boy of the moment, the man who can do no wrong, Seth Rogen, who makes $80-$100 million three times in a row, and he winds up in your movie and makes $2.2 million on an opening Friday? My mind snapped. It was a Saturday morning and my mind snapped. I didn’t go throw stuff around the room; I just said, “I’m done.” I retired to the library for the next two to three months; I became a hardcore stoner. I had never been a stoner.

What?!

KS: Ah! Everyone says that! I could count on two hands the number of times I smoked weed in my life up until last fall, and then I became a hardcore. Some people went: “Oh, you’re medicating, blah, blah, blah.” I believe at age 38, if you decide to start smoking weed and you’re who I am and you’ve done what you’ve done, I think it’s safe to say that it’s OK. You know what I’m saying?

Seems people got in your face. They were concerned.

KS: There are some people who got really braced. But there were more people who had your reaction: "What do you mean you just became a stoner?" I never smoked weed all that time. You can’t smoke weed and make all those movies. In that library, I had to kind of recreate -- even figure out -- who I was because, all of a sudden, I was at the place where Judd’s doing what I used to do. I apparently can’t even do what Judd does now, based on that gross. So what am I doing here? I've got no place in this business anymore, my time is over. The end.

It was weird, I was sitting there going: “Wow, I always said I’d go out gracefully, but is this it?” The business, the world, has just told me they don’t give a sh*t about me and my ideas. In that haze, man, I was thinking what I’d do for the rest of my life. I’ve been buying all these DVDs for years, all stacked up in the library, the large majority I never opened. This is what I’ve been waiting for! Go ahead! Time to watch DVDs! The first thing I grabbed was this big-ass boxed set called Hockey: The People’s History. That brought me out of the wilderness, man.

Suddenly, it took me to pre-film; back to before everything was all about the movies, and career, which began on my 2nd birthday, when I knew I wanted to make movies. When Clerks got picked up, two years later I made a movie and it got picked up two years after that. One year later another got picked up, and suddenly I was a bona fide filmmaker -- from a dude who lives in New Jersey and works in a convenience store, to a bona fide filmmaker.

In order to stay in that world, you stick to it; I would write something else. I would never let these motherf*ckers realize they could boot me out of the room. Once my foot was in the door, I was going to stay. I knew I didn’t have the talent other people had, but I knew I had enough heart -- enough heart to play hard. I got enough to get in there. There are people who were born to do this; it’s in their blood. It’s taken me 15 years to step behind a camera and makes something everyone agrees looks like a movie.

You're very hard on yourself.

KS: It’s true though. I was down on myself, but I got to that place where I realized all those years I was rat-racing it, number chasing -- terrible. [It was] all about success. It’s sick. Fifteen years of doing what I’m doing, it means nothing unless you can make a movie that makes $100 million, and I didn’t realize that while I was chasing that phantom $100 million movie that I’ll never make: I don’t have one of those in me. My ideas don’t equate to $100 million box office. You’re told this is the important thing. This is what you have to strive for.

In one way, it’s got to be good. I achieved my goals early, right out of the f*ckin’ gate, man. So if I had been one of these other a**holes who were like well, f*ck it, man -- just give it to me, now I deserve it. I meet a lot of people in this business like that. All these people who say success changes people; well, no, it just magnifies what’s there. You could be a sh*t in real life and get a lot of success, and you’re a bigger sh*t. I never wanted to be one of those people. I wanted to maintain who I was while doing the job at the same time.

I got to the point where I was like; I left behind a lot of things, man. I used to be really interesting, and maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s what’s missing. And I’m sitting there watching this CBC doc, and the whole world slips away. It didn’t matter anymore; it didn’t matter about these f*cking numbers. I realized I am a heart player. There are people out there who are better at my job than I am, but there are very few people who are heart players. I know that’s my value now, I get it.

What happened when you knew that?

KS: You know what it did? I was able to come to peace with all those people who for 15 years said: "Oh, he’s not a filmmaker; the motherf*cker can’t direct." And they were right. I wasn’t a director. Not their kind of director.

Well, so what?

KS: Yeah! What I did was different. I would rip open my chest, pull out the fatty chunks of heart and put it on the platter and project it. That to me is making a movie, that’s film, that’s the only way I know how to do it. Some people will see that and identify with that and feel it like religion. Other people will say it’s not standard: “This doesn’t count! This can’t possibly count!” They’re right, man. I was not fundamentally born to direct. But I’ve been doing it for 15 years and I’m sorry, I’ve gotten better at it. If you can stay in that long and work on your craft and sh*t, you get to the point where it’s like: I’m sorry, man, I got a legacy behind me now. I may have been chasing a $100 million gross for my whole career, but there are eight movies in my wake that have impacted the culture, impacted people [who] love those movies.

So you think you had it all wrong?

KS: I did. And weed helped me out of it. Weed and hockey, and that’s why the next flick I’m doing is a hockey flick. It’s based on the Warren Zevon song "Hit Somebody" about a goon -- a guy who shouldn’t be playing hockey because he’s not very good at it, but they make him play the one role he doesn’t want to play.

Do you think you're underselling yourself?

KS: It’s the only way I can exist. This is what I’ll always be happy with. Every movie I make from now on, I’m taking it right to here (taps heart). All I can do is make it and put myself into it; I can’t sell it enough. I wanna play my heart out even if I can’t touch the cup. I’m winning scoring championships and I’m never gonna touch the cup.